• The anarchic eruption of illegal constructions does not only concern the seaside.

  • The "cabanization" has reached agricultural land in the suburbs of Toulouse and small villages in Haute-Garonne whose mayors are often disillusioned.

  • The prefecture has just launched a platform to help them on the legal side, either to regularize the constructions, or to request their demolition.

  • And an algorithm developed by Cnes will make it possible to identify bungalows, basic shacks or concrete slabs that stand out in the landscape on satellite images.

"It starts with a caravan that turns into a small cabin," says the mayor of a village in Haute-Garonne.

Then in real house, sometimes super beautiful.

“And above all super illegal.

Well known by the sea, where "vacationers" are gradually fitting out improved bungalows to keep their feet in the water while circumventing the Littoral law, the phenomenon of "cabanisation" also extends inside the land and particularly in the Toulouse countryside.

Our mayor, quoted above, saw his "cabin" arise "4-5 years ago" on agricultural land, therefore by definition not buildable, in the meander of a river, "in the middle of a flood zone".

Since he has no legal department, he sent a few registered letters, which went unanswered.

He does not see what more he can do, except worry about the family when the water rises and face the recriminations of the inhabitants who, themselves, are in good standing.

"We don't have the tools", he breathes, "disillusioned".

Not the means, in particular, to control the sale of agricultural land and to prevent owners, or quite often their "heirs", from being tempted to sell "at a higher price" to families who declare themselves as "farmers" but have no very often only "two three hens" to give the change.

Sometimes an entire subdivision

Jérôme Bouteloup, the mayor of Seysses, knows the scheme.

On the aptly named place called La Sereine, it is not a cabin that has grown in twenty years but downright “a housing estate of 35 to 40 houses”.

Not to mention new diffuse installations here and there.

“Our only tool so far was to draw up reports, to launch procedures which very often end in fines addressed to insolvent families.

He is well aware that you cannot say outright to a family that has lived there for years, and who also own their land, to leave.

In the meantime, it is necessary to manage the schooling of about fifty more children and the citizens who complain because the public lighting of the departmental road is diverted.

"Mayors often find themselves very alone",


But they are a little less so since this Wednesday and the launch by the prefect Etienne Guyot of a “departmental charter for the prevention and fight against cabanization”, of which the municipality of Seysses and the AMF31 are the first signatories.

It is coupled with an online platform, Lucca (for "Fight against cabanization"), allowing the legal support of mayors throughout the procedure.

Like notaries and the agricultural community, the public prosecutor's offices of Toulouse and Saint-Gaudens are associated with this new concern.

Samuel Vuelta-Simon, the public prosecutor of Toulouse, announces that a prosecutor specializing in environmental issues will follow up on cabanisation files.

For Christophe Amunzateguy, the prosecutor of Saint-Gaudens, "this charter will improve the processing of procedures through faster, more technical and more precise reports, which will make it possible either to regularize situations that can be, or to require all simply demolition before the criminal court”.

Cnes and its trained algorithm

And to avoid reaching this extreme, the best thing is to identify, sometimes in the middle of the fields, the beginnings of a cabanisation.

And this is where Cnes comes into play, more specifically its Earth Observation Laboratory, which relies on high-resolution images from the two satellites of the Pléiades system.

Like the taxes which now identify swimming pools, the Cnes has "trained" an algorithm to detect "probable cabanization objects".

“Caravans, hard constructions or concrete slabs, we can provide mayors with two turnkey images a few weeks or months apart,” explains Jean-Marc Delvit, the laboratory manager.

It is up to city councilors to verify the accuracy of the algorithm in the field.

Lucca must now prove itself on a subject that is both socially and legally complex.

The mayor of Seysses wants to believe "that it will progress significantly",


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